Fear and loathing in game journalism

With an increase in game coverage, is the backlash against journalists …

It's been about a year since Opposable Thumbs was first launched. With many of our fellow game blogs also coming up on their terrible twos, it's no surprise that they, perhaps a little nostalgic from the holidays, went from introspection to self-loathing. There's been a spate of "I hate new games journalism" articles, starting most notably with 1UP's Dan Hsu and bouncing all around the game blogosphere*, with a pretty good summation of events from Kyle Orland at Video Game Media Watch and a redux in coverage from The Guardian's own gaming blog:

Rather than being critics who add to the industry as film and music journalists arguably did back in the heady days of the 50's - 70's (though there's a whole other debate in the state of those two branches of critical journalism these days and in the past) videogame journalists are mere extensions of the marketing machine, pushing even the most mediocre of games into a good light with the public in previews and then trashing them for sport to see how many good puns can be dredged out of the 500 words which the author really doesn't want to have to write.

Sure, it's entirely possible that folks are willing to say good things about a game in exchange for swag and when G4, who started out by billing itself as TV for gamers, cancels its own original programming for reruns of Star Trek, you can understand why our colleagues are a little frustrated by the state of the industry. But surely the potential for bad journalism exists outside of video game coverage, and tarring us all with the same brush just seems a little unfair.